fWritten for Moore’s Rural New-Yorker,] 
> LITTLE JACOB’S THOUGHTS OF HEAVEN. 
I 
'j BY MISS M. BOUSE. 
Little Jacob in the doorway, 
Flaxen hair and soft hrown eyes, 
Age of only four short summers. 
Yet—if judged by his replies. 
Or ids sage and wise reflections, 
As lie stands there in the door, 
With his hands placed in Ids pockets,— 
You would think him doubly four. 
I had told him of the Savior 
O nly a few hours before, 
How lie loved the little children, 
How He blessed in days of yore; 
That, if only good, otir Jesus 
A t His coming would assign 
To each a robe of spotless beauty, 
Crowns that as the stars would shine. 
Turning from Ills deep reflections, 
Jakkv said—“ If Heaven's so high, 
How can Jssrs take us up there? 
Will wo, as the angels, fly?" 
And 1 paused ere I could answer,— 
I so void of words and grace,— 
Glancing at the childish figure— 
At the little, earnest face. 
“ O, I’ve thought non liow He dots it,” 
Joyously t heard him cry; 
“ Con can better come than Jesus— 
Jesus stays there in the sky. 
Gon comes down and gets the children, 
Takes them in His arms, and then 
JEacs. with some ropes and pulleys. 
Draws Dim 11 p to J heaven aijain .” 
I could scarce refrain from smiling 
At the little dreamers thought, 
Yet withal its novel meaning 
tt to me a lesson taught; 
That the way is not so easy 
But that we our strength must give— 
We owtelvtt must hold the “ pulleys,” 
Guide the • ropes,” if we would live. 
Catlin, Chemung Co., N. Y., 1802. 
[Written for Moore’s Rural New-Yorker.] 
A RAINY DAY. 
It makes me so blue, says one, I can’t endure it. 
IIow dull,echoes another; the d ay is so long and cheer¬ 
less when the rain is pouring. Well, we are neither 
blue nor dull, but unusually bappy and cheerful 
upon a rainy day; yes, we really enjoy it—so cosily 
can we sit down beside our table, and read, write, or 
•work as we list, without interruption. On such 
days cannot our hands do something, or our hearts 
devise means for sending cheerfulness and comfort 
into homes where, when the rain falls without, there 
is nothing within to give light or comfort? where 
little ones gather, cold and suffering, no hope of 
bright blossoms to charm their eyes, and no kind 
words of love to cheer their sad hearts? They long 
for the sunshine, that out in its warm embrace they 
may wander, and looking up to the blue sky enjoy 
such dreams as they never know beneath the miser¬ 
able roof they call home, and which but half shelters 
them from the cold storms of winter or rain of 
summer. 
But with the ordinary comforts of life how refresh¬ 
ing the 6onnd of the rain, — to know the drifted 
snows of our long winter are wasted—to hear the 
roar of the rushing brook which has so long been 
ice-bound—to see the grass springing from the 
brown earth as by magic—to know in our garden 
the snow-drop has appeared, anil tulips and hya¬ 
cinths have come forth into life again, and soon 
many tiny flowers will open their petals for the rain 
drop and sunshine. The buds are reddening upon 
the maples, anil soon spring will elolhe the earth 
with beauty. All this the rain of to-day is forward¬ 
ing. Across the nay, from the barn-eaves, it is 
dripping, and just within the door stands a group of 
nice Polands, striving to re-adjust their fallen feath¬ 
ers. A mimie cataract is pouring from the spout 
into a trough , which is a substitute tor a cistern. And 
still it comes down. 0, we love to hear it falling 
on the window pane: we love to hoar its wild sooth¬ 
ing music. Wo can close our eyes aud enjoy such 
delightful day-dreams as never visit us when the 
stillness of a calm, sunshiny day is around us. But 
on such as this, We can pass from the outer to the 
inner life, and, the entrance closed to mortal eyes, 
recall the scenes, commune with the hearts, aud 
look upon the faces of “ long ago.” How dear, how 
pleasant they are to us? Time Las wrought no 
change—they retain all the freshness of youth’s 
spring-time; the glow of Irieudship and love is there, 
uncontaminated, unchanged by the discipline of life 
We recall a rainy day in our childhood, when we 
feared the world would be drowned, so deluge-like 
the waters poured; but our fears were dispelled, 
lor a pleasant voice said Gon had placed the beau¬ 
tiful rainbow in the clouds as a token he would 
not destroy the world again, and His word failed 
not, so we need not fear. How often have we fled 
to our “ark of safety ” — father’s anus—and felt 
secure, though a tempest were without. That smile 
upon us, those hands smoothing gently our hair, 
we felt secure and happy. Long since the smile 
became changeless, the hands were folded over the 
breast of the sleeper, and the gentle voice was 
hushed; but to-day we have dreamed of them—0, 
such beautiful dreams of our childhood—would they 
might last forever. 
Our hearts, like the earth, are softened by the 
rain, and when we come from that inner sanctuary, 
where are eommunings held of which we may not 
speak, there are tears left upon its pure tablets, and 
glistening upon the bright pictures there enshrined. 
Night finds the rain still falling, yet are we not 
weary of its music. 
But with pleasure iist to thee, 
Soothing rain-drop minstrelsy. 
Softly on the garden mold, 
Louder on the clap-board old; 
La, la on the window pain, 
Tra, la, la, la it sings again. 
And a harp within our heart 
Murmureth an answering part. 
OUR WOMEN AND THE WAR. 
Sacrifices of American Women.—A good idea 
“ is advanced in the following from the McGregor 
Times. Speaking of a soldier who left his wife and 
child behind him while he went to the war. it says: 
We will always concede the meed of patriotism 
and self-sacrifice to the man who leaves his home 
and business to save his country from threatening 
perils; but we contend that the fond wife who 
relinquishes her husband, and with her babe cheer¬ 
fully accepts the doubled cares and utter loneliness 
of a three years’ separation from him who is more 
than life to her. in all that goes to make up Ibe sum 
of a patriotic heroism, is immeasurably above her 
companion. It is quite time the vast army of heroic, 
self-sacrificing women of this land should receive 
a just recognition for the important part they have 
enacted throughout this unhappy rebellion. There 
iH one courage that goes to the battle-field; there is 
another which cheerfully yields everything in life 
worth living for upon the altar of its country. 
A Little Heroine.— The following touching 
story of ‘‘ what a little girl has done,” is communi¬ 
cated to the Cleveland Herald. It is one ol the 
prettiest things of the kind we have ever seen: 
On the cars between Dunkirk aud Buffalo, will j 
be seen daily a pretty, delicate-looking girl, per¬ 
haps twelve or fourteen years old, who goes from 
car to car selling some little books of a religious 
nature, published by the American Tract Society. 
She first distributes through the car a printed blt'of 
paper, bearing the signatures of three railroad Su¬ 
perintendents, and to this effect: 
The bearer of this, Miss Flora F.. Simmons, is an honest 
and industrious girl, and in every way worthy of your patron¬ 
age She supports herself and a sick mother from the pro¬ 
ceeds of her sales. 
After being thus introduced, she asks you to 
purchase one of the little books, price ten cents, 
and seldom does her request, made in a sweet, 
modest tone, accompanied by a winning smile, 
meet with a refusal. Completely won by her unaf¬ 
fected modesty, we drew her into conversation, by 
which we elicited the following facts, which makes 
Miss Flora a boroine in our eves. Duriog her 
leisure hours since the war commenced, our heroine 
has made live hundred and eighty pincushions and 
knit twenty-two pairs of woolen socks, all of which 
she has distributed herself to Ohio soldiers in West¬ 
ern Virginia. She has now but just returned from 
a visit to Gauley Bridge, where she went to dis¬ 
tribute books to the soldiers of the Ohio Seventh 
regiment. These books are gifts, which she is 
enabled to dispense by making a sacrifice of her 
time and strength, which, we fear, will prove too 
much for her delicate health. Her day’s work ordi¬ 
narily has been to sell on two trains, but her mother 
has. at her earnest request, allowed her to sell on 
three trains a day. and the proceeds of her sales on 
the third train is devoted to the soldiers. Thus , 
does this noble little girl strive to soften the hard- , 
ships of the defenders of her beloved country. We ( 
could gain nothing but these bare facts, but it 
requires no stretch of the imagination to believe , 
that, to the rough soldiers far away from home and , 
(fiends, this lovely girl appears like aa angel light 
as she moves among them with her gifts. 
A Noble Woman.— Robert Brand, Esq., Mayor i 
of Galena, in a report to a citizens’ meeting, touch- 1 
ing his duties in connection with the wounded men \ 
of Company I. Nineteenth regiment, at the late j 
disaster on ibe Ohio and Mississippi railroad, thus r 
speaks of the noble conduct of Madam Turehin, r 
the Colonel's wife, on that mournful occasion: g 
This report would be incorrect were 1 to omit the r 
names of Col. Turehin and his heroic wife; the i 
[Written for Moore's Rural New-Yorker.] 
THE PRAIRIE. 
BY GEORGE W. BUNGAY. 
Behold the prairie, broad, and wild, and free; 
Ocean of emerald grass and golden flowers. 
’Tis Gori s own garden unprofaned by man; 
There the sweet grass with its green linger points 
To Him who feeds it, with His hands in clouds. 
Tis there the rainbow-tin ted flowers send up 
Incense from flaming cups of purest balm. 
There yellow bees hum out their drowsy songs 
Upon the bosom of the wild white rose. 
There, striped with green and gold, the serpent glides 
With deadly venom neath a tongue of fire; 
And showers of insects fluttering in the air 
On gauzy wing- so various dyed, they seem 
The happy offspring of the gorgeous flowers. 
Gay birds, like winged blossoms filled with song, 
Pour forth their roundelays from morn till eve. 
That jewel of the air, the oriole — 
There hangs his cradle on the lonely tree, 
And bland winds rock it with their unseen hands, 
And nature watches it with stars in heaven. 
Ilion, N. Y., 1862. 
[Written for Moore's Rural New-Yorker.] 
LOVE OP HOME. 
Colonel, for his care and attention in providing for 
his soldiers, and the facilities he exteuded in the 
performance of my sad duties to the dead. But to 
hear the wounded men speak ol the heroic conduct 
of the brave Mrs. Turehin!—when the accident 
occurred — when the dead, dying, and mutilated, 
lay in oue mass ol' ruin —when the bravest heart 
was appalled, and all was dismay, this brave woman 
was in the water rescuing the mangled and the 
wounded from a watery grave, and tearing from her 
person every available piece of clothing as bandages 
for the wounded — proves beyond all question that 
she is not only the right woman in the right place 
but a fit consort for the brave Turehin in leading 
the gallant sons of Illinois to battle. Such mis¬ 
fortunes bring forth heroic women, whose services 
may be frequently needed if this fratricidal war 
shall continue to the bitter end. 
Mrs. Captain Ricketts.— From released prison¬ 
ers who recently arrived in Washington, the Star 
learns that Mrs, Ricketts, who is confined in the 
building (in Richmond) in which her wounded hus¬ 
band and other of our wounded officers lay, is the 
object of much attention from Mrs. Jeff Davis, Mrs. 
Joe Johnston, and others, who carry her various 
delicacies daily, all of which she in turn bestows on 
the sick and wou nded around her. She also devotes 
all the time she can spare from her husband in bis 
continued precarious condition to devoted attention 
upon the rest of the sufferers by whom she is sur¬ 
rounded, there being half a dozen such confined in 
the same room with Capt. R, 
Mrs. Ricketts is a noble woman. On the terrible 
Monday after the Bull Run battle, and the moment 
she beard that her husband was wounded, she took 
the risk of crossing through the broken and scat¬ 
tered columns of our troops into the lines of the 
enemy, passing Stone Bridge, waiting upon her 
wounded husband in the hospital near there, and 
pressing on to Manassas and Richmond, where we 
hear of her as a true ministering angel. What is 
If ever household loves and affections are grnce- 
* ful things, they are graceful in the poor. The ties 
that bind the wealthy and proud to home may be 
forged on earth; but those that link the poor man 
1 to his humble health, are of the true metal, and 
bear the stamp of heaven. The man of high 
descent may love the halls and lands of hia inher¬ 
itance as pari of himself, as trophies of Mb birth 
' and power; his associations with them are associa¬ 
tions of pride, and wealth, and triumph. The poor 
man’s attachment to the tenement be holds, which 
strangers have held before, and may to-morrow 
occupy again, has a worthier root, struck deep into 
a purer soil. His household gods are of flesh and 
blood, with no alloy of silver or precious stones; he 
has no property but in the affections of his own 
heart; and when they endear bare floors and walls, 
despite of rags and toil, and scanty meals, that man 
has his love of home from Gon, and his rude hut 
becomes a sacred place. 
Oh! if those who rule the destinies of nations 
would but remember this.—if they would but think 
how hard it is tor the very poor to have engendered 
in their hearts that love of home from which all 
domestic virtues spring.— where they live in dense 
and squalid masses, where social decency is lost, 
or rather never found,—if they would but turn 
aside from the wide thoroughfares and great, bouses, 
and strive to improve -the wretched dwellings in 
by-ways, where only poverty may walk,—many 
low roofs would point more truly to the sky than 
the loftiest steeple that now rears proudly up from 
the midst of guilt, crime, and horrible disease, to 
mock them by its contrast. In hollow voices from 
the workhouse, hospital and jail, this truth is pro¬ 
claimed from day to day, and has been proclaimed 
for years. 
In love of home, the love of country has its use; 
and who are truer patriots, or the best in time of 
need—those who venerate the land, owning its 
woods, and streams, and earth, and all that they 
produce, or those that love their country, boasting 
not a foot of ground in all its wide domain? Facts, 
now developing themselves In the great and fearful 
struggle for our national honor and existence, 
reply —the latter. True it is that many wealthy 
men are to be found in the army: the point we 
maintain is, that it is the laboring classes who form 
its bulk; men who appreciate and prize the boon of 
liberty; men who “know their rights, and knowing- 
dare maintain.” w. l. a. 
Wautoma, Wis., 1862. 
[Written for Moore's Rural New-Yorker.] 
A SUNBEAM. 
It came glimmering from its cloudless dome and 
stole a frozen water drop from the window pane ; 
united, they ran down to earth together and sank 
iuto the dark mold. Ah, Mr. Sunbeam, you will 
gladly let go your bold on that water drop when 
the Ice King comes again in pomp and power. 
“ Not so; 1 have married the ice drop, and for weal 
or woe we two are one. No sunbeam goes back-to 
the fountain. The King of Day lavishes us upon 
your great earth. We found if a dark mass—a bar¬ 
ren waste. What it is now we have made it. The 
changes are accumulated sun).earns. Take these, and 
earth is again the unclad sphere the first sunbeams 
sought” 
This true? This earth, with all its showy sub¬ 
stance mere, sunbeams? The ripened wheat swayed 
in the breeze; sunlight bathed its graceful bending 
spires; it caught them, and gave a product of plump 
bushels of material sunbeams. The tall Indian 
corn laughed in its way as the golden yellow of the , 
sun and the clear blue of the sky blended to artist i 
green and threw their mantle over it, sharing with 
all the green pastures and sun-loving woods. And j 
the corn caught the glow and stole its yellow for its j 
own glorious cereal, aud garnered its treasured i 
beams for commerce. 
man drank til drunken—mad from liquid sunshine. 
A circle sat at tri-daily meal and thanked the 
Goij who gave it for bread and moat—sunbeams 
from the “throne of Gon.” And thus was God in all, 
and the source of alL W. H. Gardner. 
Amboj, Illinois, May, 1S62. 
[Written for Moore's Rural New-Yorker.] 
MONEY MAKES THE MAN. 
Yes, “ money makes the man,” woman, and child. 
Why is’ut it just as well to speak it right out in 
plain English, as it is to act it, while you are all the 
time saying something else. It makes but little dif¬ 
ference what a man does if he is rich—money 
“ covers a multitude of sins.” 
He may take the lust dollar from his poor neigh¬ 
bor and turn his family into the street, he may 
squeeze sixpences, till they cry for mercy,—he may 
do everytbiug that is mean and niggardly, but 
public opinion says “he is wealthy, that is the way 
he made his money, and I don't know but it is just 
as good a way as any.” 
Yonder young man. whose precedents one would 
blush to look over, who sips his brandy and drives 
fast horses.—who is there but he can associate with? 
Maneuvering mamas point him out as an excellent 
match. And why? Simply because ho is rich? If 
he were poor he would be despised. It is true there 
are some in every community who look at things in 
their true light, and who measure men by their 
merit, but these few are not the majority. Money is 
the. great magnet, and he who has the most of it ex¬ 
ercises the most influence. It possesses great power, 
i [gives character where there is none, it finds beauty 
where none existed before, it makes a mean man 
decent, it finds husbands for forlorn damsels, it leads 
rascals into the best of society, it wields magic 
power everywhere; in a word, “money makes the 
[Written for Moore's Rural New-Yorker.] 
THE AUTUMN OF THE SOUL. 
BY MINNIE M1NTW00D. 
I hear a moaning in th’ air, 
Solemn, and sad, and low. 
Like the d>ing dirge of the summer's breeze, 
Pressing the harp-strings of the trees. 
When its pulse is growing slow. 
Tis but the echo of tnv soul! 
Stricken, barren, Vnd cold,— 
A requiem for flowers that died,— 
Flowers I had worn in my soul with pride,— 
Jewels of wealth untold! 
Oh, blackened and dead remains! 
Sad souvenirs of yore, 
Sweet loves all blighted, joys all dead; 
Of Hope, there’s deep Despair instead, 
Darkness forevermore! 
OVERDOSING. 
Dr. Holmes has little faith in homeopathy, but 
quite as little in the curative power of drugs, or the 
expediency of the large doses which many allo¬ 
pathic physicians give their patients. In his lecture 
on “ Currents and Counter Currents,” he uttered 
the following wholesome truths, which startled some 
of the faculty: 
Invalidism is the normal state of many organisms. 
It can be changed to disease, but never to absolute 
health by medicinal appliances. There are many 
ladies, ancient and recent, who are perpetually tak¬ 
ing remedies for irremediable pains and aches. 
They ought to have headaches, and backaches, and 
stomachaches; they are not well if they do not have 
them. To expect them to live without frequent 
twinges, is like expecting a doctor’s old chaise to go 
without creaking; if it did, wc might be sure the 
springs were broken. There is no doubt that the 
constant demand for medicinal remedies from pa¬ 
tients of this class, leads to their overuse; often in 
the case ol catbarties, sometimes in that of opiates. 
I will venture to say this, that if every specific 
were to fail utterly; it the chincona trees all died 
out, and the arsenic mines were exhausted, the sul¬ 
phur regions burned up; if every drug from the 
vegetable, animal and mineral kingdom were lo 
disappear from the market; a body of enlightened 
men, organized as a distinct profession, would be 
required just as much as now, and respected and 
trusted as now, whose province should bo to ^uard 
Oh, cheerless soul of mine! 
Bereft of Hope and Faith,— 
There comes a spring-time to the soul, 
A reaching of the spirit goal, 
A Life beyond the Death. 
Hillsdale Farm, Tomp. Co., N. Y., 1862. 
THE CHRISTIAN’S SENSE OF SIN. 
If you can carry the feeling with you when you 
pray, that you are really approaching a loving 
Father, and approaching him as sons and heirs, 
asking the pardon of sin, it will not make you hate 
6in any the less, but it will make you admire the 
Savior more, and love our Father also yet more. 
There is no real, deep, poignant sense of sin until 
you have a deep, joyous sense of God as your 
father. When the moral law discloses your sins, 
you feel and see them; but there is a rising and 
rebellious feeling in your inmost heart that impels 
you to think the law too severe, the legislator too 
exacting. But when you draw near to God, and see 
your sins in the light of a Father’s face, you feel 
that your sins have been ingratitude, and that you 
have smitten, not a king, a sovereign, a legislator, 
but a parent. And hence, when the prodigal felt 
where he was, and whence he had fallen, and what 
he was, the deepest spring of penitence in his heart 
was in that bright recollection in his memory, 
“Father.' And hence lie said, “I will arise and go 
to my father,” Holding fast his paternal and filial 
relationship; and seeing his sins only the more 
heinous because they were sins not against a master, 
but against a father. The Christian will ever have 
the deepest sorrow lor sin, the deepest sense of its 
heinousness, while his deepest impressions of that 
sin are pregnant with hope; whereas the natural 
man's deepest conviction of sin drives him nearest 
to despair. A Christian’s sense of sin carries him 
to our Father; an unregenerate man’s sense of sin 
carries him away from our Father.— Dr. Gumming. 
-<■■».«- 
Selfishness in Prayer. —Even in prayer we 
may grow selfish, hence the Savior teaches us to 
say “ Our Father,” and carries the plural all through 
the model ho gives us. Often we need to forget 
ourselves, and especially when we think our case at 
the worst, and have fallen into a perfect bewilder¬ 
ment of doubt. At such a time, to seek and to 
dwell upon suitable objects of prayer outside of us, 
against the causes of disease; to eliminate them, if is like emerging from a confined, dark chamber, to 
possible, when still present; to order all the condi¬ 
tions of the patient so as to favor the efforts of the 
system to right itself, and to give those predictions 
of the course of disease which only experience can 
warrant, and which, in so many cases, relieve the 
exaggerated fears of sufferers and their friends, or 
warn them in season of impending danger. Great 
as the loss would be, if certain active reme¬ 
dies could no longer be obtained, ii would leave the 
medical profession the most essential part of its 
duties, and all. and more than all. its present share 
of honors; for it would be the death-blow to char¬ 
latanism, which depends for its success almost 
entirely on drugs, or at least a nomenclature that 
suggests them. 
There is no offence, then, or danger, in expressing 
the opinion that, after all tl^it has been said, the 
community is still overdosed. The beet proof of it 
is, that no families take so tittle medicine as those of 
doctors, except those of apothecaries, and that old 
practitioners are more sparing of active medicines 
than younger ones. 
-<■-♦■■« - 
HINT TO STUDENTS. 
A heaped measure of these were brought to the 
“still,” and lo! in new term alcohol was their name, 
and a student took them to his garret and by their 
disenthralled “ lamp-shed light” pored o’er the lore 
of other days,—the history of ancient sunbeams, 
without discerning that all that is wonderful in the 
Human beings, in the course of their lives, go 
through many phases of opinion and feeling as to 
most matters ; but there is no single matter in which 
they exhibit extremes so far apart, as that of confl¬ 
uence in themselves. Some who, as schoolboys, 
were remarkable for their forwardness, always 
ready to start up and roar out an answer in their 
class, and even at college were pusMng, and quite 
ready to take a lead among their fellows, ten 
years after leaving the university have shrunk 
into very modest, retiring, and timid men. I have 
known several cases in which this was so, always in 
the case of those who bad oarried off high honors. 
Doubtless this lossof confidence is, in some measure, 
the result of growing experience, and the lowlier 
estimate of one's own powers which that seldom fails 
to bring to men of sense; but it may also be the result 
of a nervous system early over-driven, and a men¬ 
tal constitution from which the elasticity has been 
taken by too hard work, gone through too soon. If 
Whirli i‘ a.- j tie: 
W) 
Pa 
K.i i i* 'veil vif 
On the lv.hes'i* 'ii 
S; 
S, ■ 
M win li«tc!i i 
Unti! slum> • • a! 1 . 
A in! .'by song in 1 
Chenango Co. N V 1862. 
ie -j .v . waken 
shaken. 
the plain, 
tn ' ud dies. 
Bell Clinton. 
know her. We are glad to place these redeeming 
qualities as a partial offset to the wicked war and 
rebellion in wMch her husband figures as one of the 
chief actors. 
Never marry an author. He is sure at some time 
or other to put you iu his books, and the conse¬ 
quence is, you will come out, like those rare botan¬ 
ical specimens similarly preserved, as flat and as 
dead as possible. Not a fraction of color will there 
be left in you. There will only be the withered 
outline by which you will be able to trace your 
original beauty. In fact, a wife to an author is only 
so much book-muslin to enable him to dress -up Ms 
characters with. To clothe others, the wretch does 
own kin’s labor; coming from the source with the 
light by which the student read their chronicles. 
Above the storm the bright sun shone. The storm 
—vapor sunbeams upward rising in marriage bonds 
with purest water. By wind-wings borne, itcareered 
o’er the. earth. Wind—sunbeams and air in unison, 
married into one. Onward they passed in cloud- 
cbarioi, bearing to earth in other form mandates 
from the King on high, appointed “to rule the day.” 
Wind, the sunbeams chariot. The cloud rolled on; 
sharp lightnings leaped troni its black form with 
earth-shaking roar—mere bonded sunbeams doing a 
mission of the hour. 
A laughing boy ran leaping hither—“I am my 
not. scruple to cut up his own wife.— The Hermit of father's.” “ Thou art the sunbeams’ which warmed 
Bring your gnu - - to toe ion hstone. to try their 
truth, rather than' to th balance to weigh their 
measure. 
the Ilayniarjcet. 
A Comparison.— The damps of autumn sink into 
the leaves, aud prepare them for the necessity of the 
fall; and thus insensibly are we, as years close 
round us. detached from our tenacity to life by the 
gentle pressure ol recorded sorrows. — Waller 
I Savage Landor. 
thee into life,” a voice replied. 
Coal crackled in the grate, burned and glowed; 
and steam in the lungs of the “Iron Life” made 
mortals wonder,—’twas sunbeams all. 
A lofty pine and towering oak were but sunbeams 
of other days fixed in mortal form for sunbeam 
mortals. 
The ripened grape gave out its tempered juices— 
be a broken down, spiritless creature. It was taken 
out of him too soon; he is used up. And the 
cleverest young men at the university are often the 
same. By the time they are two-and-twenty, you 
have sometimes taken out of them the best that Mill 
ever come. They will probably die about middle 
age; and, till then, they will go through life with 
little of the cheerful spring. They will not rise to 
the occasion, they cannot answer the spur. They 
are prematurely old, weary, jaded, cowed. 0 that 
the vile system of midnight toil at the universities, 
both ol' England and Scotland, were finally abolish¬ 
ed. It directly encourages many of the race to 
mortgage their best energies and future years to sus¬ 
tain the reckless expenditure of the present. It 
would be an invaluable blessing, if it were made a 
law inexorable as those of the Modes that no honors 
should ever be given to any student who was not in 
bed by eleven o’clock at the latest— Fraser's Mag. 
-» ■ ♦ ■ ♦-- 
Influences. — In the education of youth, we 
should give heed to the minutest influences, as we 
save the filings of gold and the dust of diamonds. 
. the living freshness and glorious prospect of the 
mountain's brow. The heart expands as it takes in 
its brother Christians and its brother man, as it 
pleads before God the woes of a lace of fellow- 
beings. as it wrestles with him for the fulfillment of 
his great promises to the church, and breathes forth, 
in varied forms, the petition, “ Thy kingdom come.” 
—American Presbyterian- 
The love of God is the essence and perfection of 
religion. It is the. love of all sublime and beautiful 
things: the love of all high thoughts; the love of all 
lofty purposes; the love of all noble feeling; the 
love of all elevated principles; the love of all holy 
and generous affections; the love of all magnani¬ 
mous deeds. He, then, that has added to his per¬ 
manent possession one image of beauty and noble¬ 
ness. one sound principle, one just thought, one 
■ generous sentiment, one pure aspiration, one holy 
feeling, one right act, one unclouded gleam of truth, 
has taken no inconsiderable stop towards the state¬ 
ment of that love of God, which, while it is the 
perfection of religion, is also the perfection of 
humanity, 
- ♦ ■ ■»-- 
Holiness not Emotion. — Seek holiness rather 
than consolation. Not that consolation is to be 
despised, or thought lightly of; but solid and per¬ 
manent consolation is the result rather than the 
forerunner of holiness; therefore, he who seeks con¬ 
solation as a distinct and independent object, will 
miss it. Seek and possess holiness, and consolation 
(not perhaps often in the form of ecstatic and raptur¬ 
ous joys, but rather of solid and delightful peace) will 
follow, as assuredly as warmth follows the dispen¬ 
sation of the rays of the sun. He who is holy must 
be happy.— Upham. 
Prayer.— Prayer, to make it accepted, requires 
neither genius, eloquence, nor language; but sorrow 
for sins, faith, and humility. It is the cry of distress, 
the sense of a want, the abasement of contrition, the 
energy of gratitude. It is not an elaborate string of 
well-arranged periods, nor an exercise of iugenuity, 
nor an ettbrt of the memory; but the devout breath¬ 
ing of a soul struck with a sense of its own misery, 
and of the holiuess of Ilim whom it is address¬ 
ing; experimentally convinced of its own empti¬ 
ness, and of the abundant fulness of God. 
Benefit op Afflictions.— Afflictions ane de¬ 
signed to impress the mind with its religious obliga¬ 
tions, and lead men to Christ. If improved by 
Christians, they will contribute to their holiness, 
their activity aud zeal, and their advancement iu 
the divine life. If improved by those who have 
been before indifferent to their souls' interests, they 
will lead them to repentance, and to the devotion of 
their hearts to God in faith aud affectiou. There is 
a voice in the providence of God which speaks with 
solemnity, and which it is dangerous to disregard.— 
Christ. Intelligencer. 
The school ot the cross is the school of light; it 
discovers the world’s vauity, baseness, and wicked¬ 
ness, and lets us see more of God’s mind. Out of 
dark afflictions comes a spiritual light. 
We should not forsake a good work because it 
does not advance with a rapid step. Faith in virtue, 
truth, and Almighty goodness, will save us alike 
from rashness and despair. 
